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Colossians 2:6-23 – A Holy Church
Last week I mentioned that faith means you must decide whether or not you will trust Jesus. Jesus is the one who claims to be the answer to what we are searching for in life. We will not experience peace and satisfaction without trusting Jesus. Today, we will look at the topic of holiness, which will fill in what it really means to trust Jesus and why it is so important.
I will not be able to cover the entire passage in detail, but here is a brief overview of the passage if you want to dig into it a bit more at home.
First, in verses 6-7, we see a concise summary of the message of the entire letter. Paul states in a single sentence the centrality of Christ that he was trying to communicate up until this point of the letter.
Then, in 8-12, we see the warning against false teaching that I spoke about in the introduction to this series. Paul says, don’t let anyone deceive you into thinking you have to observe certain practices in order to be holy. You are complete in Christ.
Next, in 13-15, we see how this truth relates to the situation for the Colossians and for us as Gentiles. We are completely free from bondage to sin and death. The sacrifice of Christ was enough for all people to be made holy.
In 16-19, Paul is emphasizing that no one can take away the status of those who are made complete in Christ. We can reject those ones who make a spectacle of religious practices. They are lost because they are disconnected from Christ.
Finally, in 20-23, we see a warning against various means of attaining holiness, which is a fruitless effort because Christ has already done the work on our behalf.
Paul is describing in this passage what sets the church apart; what makes it different.
That is, in essence, what holiness is: it means to be separated, set apart.
I imagine it in terms of gathering food from a garden or butchering an animal. An initial step is to separate what is useful from what is not useful. The potatoes are kept, the plant is thrown away.
So, the church is meant to be separated. From what? From anything that is not looking to God as the source of life. In other words, the church is wholly devoted to God.
What sets the church apart is that we are not searching or working for holiness, for completeness, for eternal life. It’s already ours. We look upon our God and we have hope.
We are all looking for purpose, for meaning, and for satisfaction in life.
Every religion or faith claims to have the answer. We are all trying to gain some form of justification for our existence and why we deserve a better afterlife.
For those who trust Jesus, we have nothing to prove, nothing to earn, nothing we can do to get more than what we’ve already received. We are already citizens of heaven.
So, what I want to explore today is this idea of holiness and how Paul is describing the uniqueness of the church.
We will do this by looking at the whole narrative of Scripture and how holiness is described in Israel, in Jesus, and in the Church.
The Nation of Israel as Holy
Lev 11:44-45 – I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves along the ground. I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.
19:1-2 – The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.’
What follows is a list of commands that will set them apart from the other nations: not making idols out of metal, leaving some of the harvest in the field for the poor and foreigner, not seeking revenge, and being pure in all areas of life…
20:24-26 – “You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from the nations. “ ‘You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground—those that I have set apart as unclean for you. You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.
The book of Leviticus ends with instructions on giving:
27:30, 32 – “ ‘A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord. Every tithe of the herd and flock—every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd’s rod—will be holy to the Lord.’”
The message is this: holiness will be demonstrated by how the Israelites lived. God has declared this nation to be his special possession, therefore, they must behave differently than the other nations.
Their holiness is based on God’s selection of them as his people. But, they could not be holy unless they behaved in the way God was telling them to behave.
As you will know if you have read stories from the Old Testament, this didn’t go well…
Jesus as Holy
All of the commands given to the nation of Israel were an impossible requirement for fallen humans to obey. So, God established a way for their guilt to be removed through a sacrificial system.
Paul wrote in 2:9-10, “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.”
When Jesus came, he lived perfectly obedient God’s standard for holiness. Then, he offered himself as a sacrifice to become an eternal source of purification.
The book of Hebrews provides an overview of how this works.
Heb 7:23-27 – Death prevented the priests from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
The Church as Holy
Seeing that Jesus has made an eternally secure sacrifice for our sins, how do we respond? Do we stop caring about the laws in Leviticus? The ten commandments? The practices that set God’s people apart?
An important difference between Israel and the church is that we are no longer a distinct nation or people group. God’s people now includes people of all nations, languages, and cultural traditions.
So, we cannot govern ourselves in the same way that Israel did. We have a different understanding of holiness than what is described in Leviticus.
Israel’s holiness was demonstrated when they faithfully obeyed God’s commands. It was this issue that Paul was concerned about when writing to the Colossians.
He warned them about being deceived by “elemental spiritual forces of this world.” This is a somewhat confusing phrase.
Jesus said the same thing in a different way:
Mark 7:1-8 – The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed… So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?” He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me…
They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
He went on to explain this to his disciples:
Mark 7:20-23 – “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
The point Jesus was trying to make, and what Paul is talking about in Colossians, is that our holiness is not about following rules. Rules only expose sin. They are useful for maintaining order and for providing boundaries.
But, holiness is about devotion. It’s about the desires of our heart. What we meditate on, long for, dream about.
The way the phrase that Paul uses in Colossians “elemental spiritual forces of this world” relates to us is this:
What are the forces at work in our world that are trying to convince us of our need for them? What is pulling your devotion away from God?
Whatever it is, consider what Paul goes on to say further down: these are a shadow of Christ, a fake, an imitation. They seem good, but they are empty. They are lifeless and will only decrease your desire for God.
A transformation of the heart is required. This is the work of Christ in us and will flow out of us in all areas of our life. Let’s consider this idea using the example of giving to the church. A topic that I believe is important we not shy away from.
Just to be fair, this has been an area of conviction and growth in my life over the years. So, when I say this, I’m saying it to myself as well as to you. If you are asking yourself, “How much am I supposed to give? Is it a tenth? Do I have to give it to the church? What do I have to do to be good with God?” That question is not arisen from a heart devoted to God. A holy heart doesn’t ask, “How much do I have to do?”
If you’re totally devoted, you ask, “How much can I do?” Not just the bare minimum, not just what the law required of Israel. What are the desires of God’s heart?
It’s the delights of the heart of God that you’re really after. Not, “Well, what do I have to do to stay on your good side? What are the commands? What are the duties?” A holy person doesn’t care about those things.
C.S. Lewis stated it this way:
“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperCollins, 2001), 86.
The point is, if we are asking ourselves what is the acceptable level of giving in order to be right with God, we are missing the point. We are already right with God. Forget about trying to earn his approval. That will only hold you back from true holiness.
Instead, ask, what is the character of God? He is abundantly generous, giving up even his own life for our benefit. You might think, well it was easy for Jesus, he knew that after he was killed he would be raised from the dead and given eternal glory.
The same is true for us! That is the beauty of Christianity. We have in store for us the same inheritance that Christ received upon his resurrection.
This means, when we suffer for the sake of Christ, when we give up our comfort and our safety for the benefit of others, we are imitating him. This is the highest calling as the church. To imitate Christ in how we give of ourselves for the benefit of others.
Listen to Peter:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed…
Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
1 Peter 1:3-7, 13-16 (NIV)